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Submissions to Issue 64.1 (July 2019) are now closed. Note that submission of scholarly articles for consideration is open year round (see referencing guidelines, below).

Submission Guidelines

All academic work submitted is subject to a double-blind refereeing process, and all creative work is selected through a single-blind reading by the independent poetry and prose editors.

We expect our contributors to be subscribers of the Magazine. While we will accept submissions from non-subscribers, should your work be accepted for publication in this instance, you will be asked to accept a subscription to the Magazine as part payment for your work.

Poetry: maximum of five poems, with maximum 50 lines eachFiction and Creative Non-Fiction: maximum 3500 wordsEssays: maximum 5000 wordsReviews: between 500-700 words, to be published online or in print

Westerly will endeavour to give brief feedback on submissions on request.

Deadlines for Submitting Material

Westerly is published twice a year in July and November.

July edition deadline: 31 March

November edition deadline: 31 August

A specific Call for Submissions will be disseminated for all Special Issues (both online and in print). Submission to these issues will be according to the specific criteria set.

Postal submissions should include a covering letter which includes a brief, two-line biographical note and email address for correspondence. If you require your work to be returned, you must include a stamped, self-addressed A4 envelope. (If you are sending your work from outside Australia, you may include an International Reply Paid Coupon. Do not send cash.) Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned.

Payment

We are bound by policy to pay the minimum set fees for all work published. Payment rates are:

We expect our contributing authors to be subscribers of the journal, and support the publication which is supporting them! For this reason, we ask that any authors selected for publication who are not subscribers accept a year’s subscription as part-payment for their work.

Styleguide

General

In submitting, you are declaring the work attached as original, and entirely of your own production. You will retain copyright over your work if published.

Westerly follows the current edition of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook, using parenthetical documentation and a list of works cited.

Westerly uses endnotes, not footnotes. Endnotes should be used only where absolutely necessary.

Single inverted commas are used.

The name and contact details of the author, including postal address, should appear on a separate cover page. The title of the work should appear on every page of the document.

Contributions should be saved as a Word file or a .pdf file.

Work should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration elsewhere. Prior publication will make the work ineligible for any consideration.

Style Resources

Westerly uses Australian English spelling, referring to the Macquarie Dictionary (Macq.), and secondarily to the Australian Oxford Dictionary (AOD, 2nd edition). The Style Manual (SM) is consulted in style choices.

Paragraphing

New paragraphs are denoted by indenting the first line. Do not insert line spaces between paragraphs.

Spelling

Use:

‘ise’ rather than ‘ize’

‘focuses’ rather than ‘focusses’

‘programme’ rather than ‘program’

‘enquiry’ is to be used in the general sense of ‘asking’, while ‘inquiry’ should be used to be mean a formal investigation

Capitalisation

All subtitles minimal capitalisation (Note: in Works Cited, use maximal capitalisation for the whole title, including title and subtitle.)

When a quotation is introduced in the body of the text, the quotation can be changed to lowercase or capitalised depending on the structure of the sentence. However, capitalisation and lowercase should be kept as per original text when the quotation is set as a block quotation, or when included in a title.

Italics

Numbers

Spell out ages (e.g. in his seventies, eighteen years old, forty-fourth birthday)

Spell out per cent (use symbols in tables or in parentheses)

1,000; 10,000; 1,000,000

Currency: $10, A$55, $5,000, two-dollar coin, seventy-three cents

Time and Date

Use:

30 April 1989, December 31st, the first of May, 14th October

17th century (hyphenated when adjectival), 4th century BC (use numbers where adjectival)

1920s, the ’60s

four in the morning, six o’clock, ten past seven, eight-fifteen, 6pm, 4.31am

Style Preferences

Use:

Cultural markers as per author preference

Colloquialisms and vernacular as per author preference

Dr, Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms

No ‘s’ after the apostrophe signalling possession in names ending in ‘s’: Denise Jones’ horse

Five months’ pregnant

Spacing between name initials, e.g. T. S. Eliot

Prime minister in lowercase if not incumbent

US, USA, UK

pre–World War II

capitalise organisations and titles in direct reference/address (the World Health Organisation, the Indian Army) but use lower-case for any generic references (several local health organisations, an army recruit)

In scholarly articles, the use of abbreviated titles should be avoided. Those in common usage (such as ABC, ACTU, ALP) are allowed (no stops). Lengthy titles can be reduced to a shortened form (whole words) after the first reference. The names of States (Victoria, South Australia, and so on) should not be shortened.

Illustrations

If an illustration is to be used it should be scanned to a resolution of at least 300dpi at reproduction size and numbered (for example, ‘author’s name, no 3’). It should be sent as a separate file. The place where the illustration is to be inserted in the body of the article should be marked, with the caption immediately following.

If the illustrations are not scanned, you should send the original numbered in a similar way

Referencing

Westerly uses a version of MLA in-text citations (author page), with a short title to distinguish multiple works. Please follow the basic style outlined below for all referencing.

Capitalisation as per original text when including other works within title

For two or more books by the same author, list works by date, recent to old. (Ignore articles like A, An, and The.) Provide the author’s name in last name, first name format for the first entry only. Following entries, author indicated by ‘––.’